Hornish Rolls To Win In Vegas

Sam Hornish Jr. won the Sam’s Town 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday.

The win was Hornish’s second in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series and his first since Nov. 12, 2011 at Phoenix. It was the first Las Vegas victory for Penske Racing in any NASCAR series and the first Nationwide triumph for crew chief Greg Erwin, a winning Sprint Cup crew chief who signed on with Penske during the offseason.

Busch rolled across the finish line in second, 1.1 seconds behind Hornish. Brian Vickers ran third, followed by Trevor Bayne and Elliott Sadler. Bayne recovered from an early brush with the wall to post the fourth-place result.

Hornish, who led 114 of the 200 laps, leads the series by 19 points over Sadler, Justin Allgaier (15th Saturday) and Brian Scott (ninth).

It wasn’t until race day that Hornish learned of the similarity between his name and that of the title sponsorship.

“Man, the car was awesome today,” Hornish said. “It was a real joy to drive. I’ve got to thank all the guys on the Penske team for giving me an awesome car to race with. When you have a car that good, you’re always worried something bad is going to happen or you’ll get caught in somebody else’s problem. I’m glad that didn’t happen today.”

Busch, who had dominated at Phoenix a week earlier, had an excellent car on Saturday—but not quite strong enough.

“It was a tough race out there today all around,” Busch said. “Cars were really getting loose out there in the early stages of the race through the middle part of the race… The second-to-last run and the last run, I felt like our car was really good. There wasn’t much else that we could do to make it better.

“Sam was just that much faster than us. He was beating us a little bit everywhere, all the way around the race track. Certainly, when he stepped on the gas, that thing would go forward in a hurry. Us two were kind of the class of the field, but he was the class of everybody.”